“You ever wonder how I found you,” Rafe Two asked, waving a hand toward the vastness of the hall, “in all this? Coincidence?”

“Something’s pushing the buttons.”

“Don’t put it that way,” Rafe Two said and hunched his bare shoulders, hands tucked between his knees. “You make me nervous, twin.”

“You scared of dying?”

Rafe Two nodded, slowly, simply. “So are they, I think. Jillan and Paul. They’ve got experience.”

“I’m hungry. My knees ache. Do yours?”

“No body left—brother. Got nothing like that left to bother me.” The eyes were his own, and worried. “I’m going to go after them.”

“Don’t leave me here!”

Rafe Two looked at him. “It’ll see we get back together. Won’t it?”

“I have to go back to the ship. I have to. We’re gaining nothing out here wandering these passages. Get them back. Come back yourself. To the ship. When you can.”

“The ship.” The doppelganger gave a dry and bitter laugh. “It won’t let you lose that either, will it?”

“I’m afraid for them.”

“So am I.”

The doppelganger left, a winking-out more abrupt than Paul’s.

So there had been violent parting of the ways; one fled: two gave chase; the living one pursued a painful trek back, <> surmised, to origins.

</> is gathering malcontents,” said = (+) =, on leave from its cannibalistic whole.

<> was amused, with that part of <>’s attention it had to spare. Trishanamarandu-keptarode inertia at the moment. <> had figured (accurately thus far) that this carbon-life, having ships capable of FTL, having the tendency to cluster together as they seemed to do, would not disperse themselves in long solitary voyages in between the stars and points of mass, so this vacancy seemed a likely place to coast undisturbed. <> preferred a few problems at a time: there were the passengers, after all, who were disturbed enough at three outsiders in their midst. So <> did not court attack from this carbon-life at large. The species might, <> judged, with the example of Jillan-mind, be very quick to attack if it had the chance.

<> was learning things. Jillan-mind and Rafe-mind in particular were responsive to the logic <> discovered in the primitive machinery, while Paul-mind refused focus, being a flood of strong responses on every level. They were not structurally the same, but there were strong similarities. Conclusions suggested themselves, but <> did not rush headlong into judgment, having wide experience which made surmise both slow and elaborate.

Throughout the ship other passengers were waking, more and more of them during this interlude, some of which had not waked in a very long time. Often they blundered into the barriers <> had made. But nothing got into the area where the visitors were at liberty.

This defense <> managed with one part of <>’s mind, and used another small probe on the Jillan-consciousness.

<> erased one temporary image, which began to disintegrate in subtle ways; but it was no effort now to enter the Jillan-mind on the level <> had already achieved, and <> integrated another.

Trishanamarandu-keptahad found a large bit of debris, meanwhile, and stored it for conversion, as it dealt with dust and interstellar hydrogen. <> constantly attended such things.

<> called up the Rafe-mind, and probed him with some sophistication, seeking out the differences, both physical and otherwise.

Rafe was, <> decided, less resilient but more stubborn. His barriers lasted longer, and snapped with a suddenness and disintegration that made <> suspect for a moment <> had met some clever trap, so disorienting and painful the reaction.

It was shock, <> decided. Rafe-mind had simply no experience with losing on that level, and he had met defeat without expectation, absolute and devastating, when he had planned to endure pain and outwait it.

From this collapse, Rafe-mind did not reintegrate, though <> observed him patiently and gave him every chance. So he would perish, ultimately. <> destroyed him and recreated him afresh.

It was paradoxical defense at best. It hinted irrationalities, capacities that would be augmented by physical systems in the living one, and Rafe himself had been, <> thought, stunned by his own failure.

<> suspected then why this one had survived in physical form, and why <> had so quickly broken him.

<> had robbed him of motives, that was what. That was why Rafe-mind had come apart, in solitude, without the other two.

<> did not intend Rafe-mind to learn this about himself; not yet.

Distress continued among the three newcomers. The simulacra which had gotten loose ran at hazard through their confinement, emitting terror as they went.

Paul, <> thought; it would of course be Paul in the lead, and <> was right in <>’s assessment, <> discovered, reaching out to prevent him from a meeting with = = = =, which lurked in anticipation.

= = = = was outraged. But <> pent Paul Gaines safely out of harm’s way, diverted Jillan elsewhere, and established barriers in haste, having <>’s mind on a dozen other matters.

“Robber!” = = = = hissed.

“Out,” said <>. And = = = = went, calling in = = = =’s segments that were still at large. Most howled in protest. But they came. And the idle curious scattered.

Trishanamarandu-keptafound a second bit of rock, and sucked that down as well, while automata attended small repairs.

<> considered Lindywith another part of <>’s large mind, its structures, its simplicity, for <> had not yet sent the mote to feed Trishanamarandu-kepta’s needs. It might. But <> thus far refrained, finding interest in it.

Then because Paul continued to batter himself unreasoningly at the barriers, <> gave Paul a Rafe-simulacrum to keep him calm and let him wonder why that Rafe should be difficult to wake. Paul shook at him and wept and cursed. That, <> judged, would keep him out of mischief.

For more immediate purposes <> chose the Jillan-face.

V

Rafe went striding through the dark, calling Jillan and Paul by name, tireless in his pace and wishing desperately that endurance made some difference—for they would not grow tired here any more than he would, and he could not overtake them by all the laws he knew of this place. He could never overtake them until one of them came to his senses and stopped.

Paul was running; that was what Rafe guessed, running in hurt and fear. Paul had always been the gentle one, the little boy who had played at explorer and shuddered at the dark—

—Space frightens me,Paul had confessed to him once. I’m all right in ships; just keep walls around me. When I have to go EVA, I just keep looking at the ship, the rock, whatever. Give me boundaries.

Paul was station-born. He had a stationer’s way of looking at things, and large concepts got to him, like the idea of staring time in the face when he looked out at the stars. The inside-out of jump frightened him. There were dimensions of time and space Paul staunchly refused to believe in, or at least to think of, even while he used and traveled through them.

I’m not dead,Paul had insisted; Paul Gaines could not die; no stationer could be so much alone as that. The universe would not permit so gross a violence to the devoutly nonviolent.

“Paul,” Rafe called, aching for him. His own ill-timed joking, his bloody sense of humor, the other Rafe’s—Paul did not support the contradictions. “Paul! Jillan, come back!”

Eventually a light came toward him, looking like a star at first, then a figure walking with that gliding, too-rapid stride that was the law within this place.